David Bowie’s daughter is clarifying her statements from earlier this month after claiming she was forced to go to a treatment centre when she was younger after her father was diagnosed with liver cancer.
Alexandria “Lexi” Zahra Jones — the daughter of the late singer and supermodel Iman — shared a statement on Instagram to explain that her previous post was meant to help other people who have experienced wilderness treatment programs and battled drug addiction and mental health issues.
“I’ve seen a lot of interpretations of what I shared and I want to clarify something important,” Jones, 25, began. “My story was never meant to place blame on my parents. I love my parents deeply and I don’t hold resentment toward them.”
“They were trying to help a child who was struggling in ways none of us fully understood at the time. I never shared this to create a narrative of family conflict,” she wrote.
She said that she was trying to talk about the experience “of being a young person inside the teenage treatment system and how it feels while it is happening.”
“Those feelings can exist at the same time as love for the people who were trying to help you. Both things can be true,” she added. “I shared my experience because many people who have been through similar programs carry confusion and silence around it. Hearing from others who related has already shown me the message reached who it was meant to reach.”
Jones said that she’s not asking anyone to “speculate about my family or assign fault to anyone in my life.”
“My intention is conversation and understanding about a system, not judgment of individuals. I spoke about something that shaped me in hopes someone else might feel less alone in theirs,” her post concluded.
In a video posted to her Instagram on Feb. 18, Jones shared that when she was 14, she struggled with drugs and alcohol during the same time of her late father’s cancer diagnosis.
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“When my dad was diagnosed with cancer, that was my breaking point. I was barely 14 and I could already see what the future would look like for my family and for all of us. I felt broken before it even happened,” Jones explained.
“It was my first year of high school and everyone around me was experimenting, but for me, it wasn’t about fun,” she continued. “I wasn’t experimenting. I was escaping — escaping from my complicated mind, my complicated family, my complicated school. When the party ended for everybody else, I kept going and I drank and got high alone.”
She said her mental health began to decline as she continued to increase her use of substances and that she turned into “someone who lashed out.”
Jones alleged she was taken from her family’s home after her father’s cancer diagnosis and sent to a wilderness therapy program, where she lived outdoors.
She said her dad read her a letter that ended with, “I’m sorry that we have to do this.”
When the wilderness therapy program was over, Jones thought she would be returning home. Instead, she was sent to a residential treatment centre in Utah for 13 months.
“A few months into the program, my dad passed away. I was not there. I had the luxury of speaking to him two days before on his birthday. I told him I loved him and he said it back and we both knew,” she said.
Jones was able to leave the treatment centre just before she turned 16 and went home, where she “slipped into old patterns.”
She revealed that it wasn’t long before she got “legally kidnapped again” and sent away.
In January 2016, Bowie, whose hits included Space Oddity, Fame, Heroes and Let’s Dance, died of cancer at the age of 69.
Bowie was married twice, first to actor and model Mary Angela “Angie” Barnett, from 1970 to 1980, and then to Iman in 1992. He had two children — Duncan Jones and Alexandria “Lexi” Zahra Jones — one with each wife.
— With files from The Associated Press
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